


Left Behind

by Nope



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-02
Updated: 2004-02-02
Packaged: 2018-10-25 08:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10760487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Susan is left to cope, alone.





	Left Behind

The worst moments come not when she is already lost but in that interminable before time when she can feel herself slipping and remains unable to prevent it, in that time when all the locks fall open and the chains' links break and those things she tries so hard to cling to prove one by one to be insubstantial, nothing more than smoke in her hand, nothing more than dew melting in the sun's hot light. The worst part is not the falling at all, it is the teetering on the edge; it's being stuck in that endless second between reaching through the coats and touching the wooden back of the wardrobe, frozen with her fingers scrabbling desperately in empty space, seeking everything, finding nothing.

And dusk most often finds her sitting there at the dresser squeezed in between the bed and the wall, turning her absent gaze on the face in the mirror, that blank face with its translucent skin so pale against hair like midnight, like the sky without sun, without moon, without stars. She watches while the hairbrush moves her hand, sliding from top to bottom, again and again, and again, pressed hard so the sharp bristles scratch her scalp. Sometimes she wonders where she went. Sometimes she wonders how often she has to grow up before it will stick. Sometimes she just wonders. Her head is a doll's house. Little box rooms in pretty pastel colours, filled with little wooden people arranged in comforting tableaux. Mother at the sink. Father at the table. Peter at the cupboard. Lucy at the oven. Edmund at the door. They do not move. They do not change. 

Their photos she keeps on the dresser with her blusher in its small grey pot and her silver necklace in the bottom of a tiny music box under a princess that, revealed to the light, dances to sharp alarming notes, razor music, like something tiny screaming. Air sirens sound like gulls sound like air sirens and she too had castles, once, and gowns of shimmering silk, and lovers, and kisses, deep and warm, and now there's red painting her lips and nylons sliding up her legs and something burning the back of her throat and she has not cried or laughed for so long she is no longer sure she knows how.

Lucy in pigtails and sepia smiles past her at dour Edmund in grey-toned school uniform. Lucy's frame is black wood and simple, Edmund's curled metal. The mirror's frame is painted silver. All three are stuck behind sheer sheets of glass. Peter's stern smile shines down on them from where he stands next to Mother and Father on the station concourse, and there's Edmund again, looking off somewhere to the right, no doubt at an incoming train. They always turned to watch the trains come in, to see the smoke rising and the great wheels turning. And over here, Aunt Polly and Uncle Digory, hand in hand, their eyes only for each other. A large print of Peter and Edmund and Lucy in smart dress clothes, professionally arranged on and around an antique sofa and proud smiles, and she can still hear Edmund saying, dashed luck old girl, and her own faked laughs and bitter coughs.

The hairbrush moves. In and down. In and down. Her hair goes back and up during the day, stabbed through with pins, both sensible and according to fashion. Brushed out at night, it curls inside the hairnet while she sleeps, when she sleeps, if she sleeps. In the between times, it is shaped by occasion, up or down, tied or loose according to expectation. Her eyelashes are darkened to meet it, pulled them up and out and thickened by the curl of the brush. Earrings go in her ears, small silver-looking loops slid through holes in flesh. Her dress falls across her chest, high enough for propriety, low enough for invitation. The necklace loops around her neck, fastened tight. Wet sprayed flower scent settles slickly on her throat and wrists. She closes the music box and locks it, puts the lids on her powders and rogue, slides the lid back on lipstick, places them all in the dresser drawer and locks that too, and smooths down her dress and checks her make-up once last time in the flatness of the mirror.

Once, dark skinned men kissed her in hidden corners of summer palaces, tickling her cheek with their beards. Once, Peter plunged his sword into the wolf and kissed her while she cried, the blood still on his weapon, the taste of salt on her lips. But none of that was real, she says. It never happened. She says, what wonderful memories you have, fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children, and little wooden Lucy nods, her whole body tilting forward and back, and says, oh, yes, what wonderful games we played, and if they both sound the same, who is there to hear it. Not Peter or Edmund or Lucy or Mother or Father or Aunt Polly or Uncle Digory. Just a broken rail and grey stone markers and roses or lilies every other month.

She wants to tell them that she's sorry, that the worst torture in hell is the hope of redemption, that hers is a lock of golden mane she keeps safely locked away in the smallest corner of the smallest room in her head, and that she takes it out sometimes in the deep dark and holds its light against her breast, against the relentless beating of her heart. She wants to tell them that she knows, that she understands, that she's sorry, she's so, so, sorry. She wants to tell them so many things she hasn't words enough for all of them, except for the three that count most. She wants to say I love you and mean it. She does not. She can not. They're all just pictures.


End file.
